If not AppleTalk, WHAT?

[Dan Delaney]

Hello all.

I've been wondering something for a long time. Consider the fact that Mac OS X 10.0 was shipped with NO APPLETALK support. They added that back in with a later update. It also didn't have any SMB support until 10.2. It was as if Apple wants to phase out AppleTalk (understandably, considering that many Net Admins don't like AppleTalk, considering it too chatty).

Now, my question is, if we don't use AppleTalk (or SMB) for file sharing then what SHOULD we use? What did Apple have in mind when it shipped Mac OS X with NO AppleTalk OR SMB support? How did they expect us to do file and printer sharing? (Or did they just absent mindedly FORGET to put AppleTalk in there?

Thanks
--Dan

 

[DeltaMac]

I have to use Appletalk to support a network printer that is purely AppleTalk, but file sharing doesn't require Appletalk, just a simple TCP/IP setup, basic to OSX, why use AppleTalk if you don't need.it?

 

[onan]

"AppleTalk" is a somewhat ambiguous term. It's used to refer interchangeably to AFP (the high-layer protocol used for filesharing), and DDP (the low-layer protocol used for speaking over a network, traditionally to carry AFP).

If I recall correctly, osx has always supported afp, you just only had the option at first of doing it over tcp, rather than ddp. This isn't much of a loss, given how poorly suited ddp is to current networks. (ddp uses 500-byte frames, and thus throws away two thirds of the bandwidth of ethernet, and is not reliably routable beyond a single network segment.)

Also, some smb support has been in all versions of osx, it's just simple browsing that's only recently been added.